Founded in Oxford, England in 1984, Verse is an international journal that publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and visual art. The print edition publishes portfolios of 20-40 pages, while the Verse site publishes book reviews and individual poems. Verse is edited by Brian Henry and Andrew Zawacki.

Monday, January 04, 2010

NEW! Poem by Kelli Anne Noftle

Kelli Anne Noftle

MATING RITUALS

You feel listless as underthingsunravel. At the bottom of an ocean, near her neckwhere the collar dips—some of the habits you acquire are ancient. On the one hand, you’ve beencannibal, pausing onlyto swallow light and motion. (It happens so quickly, it’s already over.) In the other hand—her jaw. Her eyelashes, rhinophores, and that other sensory sublimation by which you grasp only through tangled weeds, against the under-belly of waking, your insides, out. Your heart, a slipknot of mucus.

And this question: if all the corresponding regions make her sigh, then how did specializing in your own desire become so stereotypical, homo sapien?

Adult sea slugs are all hermaphroditic, though they still require partners to copulate. Some will engage in long elaborate courtships, joined together in intercourse for extended periods of time.